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U. S. SANITARY COMMISSION, 

No. 93. 



CIIE^CTJL^I^ 



ADDEESSED TO THE 



BRANCHES AND AID SOCIETIES 



TEIBUTAIiY TO THE 



U. S. SANITARY COMMISSION. 



JULY 4, 1865. 



WASHINGTON, D. C. ; 

PRINTED DY McGlLL & WITIIEROW. 



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MonogTan^' 



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Central Office, 
Washington, D. C, July 4, 1865. 

To THE Branches and Aid Societies tributary to the 
Sanitary Commission: 

In a circular (No. 90) issued from this office May 15, last, 
you were called on to continue j^onr labors in collecting and 
providing supplies up to the present date. For the alacrity 
you have shown in complying with this request, under circum- 
stances so unfavorable to zeal, we tender you special thanks. 
Your continued support has enabled us to extend a generous 
assistance to our armies gathered at Washington and Louis- 
ville, and elsewhere, before being finally mustered out oi 
service. Wlien you have forwarded to our Receiving Depots 
such supplies as you-may now liave in hand, we hope to find 
our storehouses sufficiently recruited to meet all remaining 
wants of the service. In the Eastern Department our work 
of supply is substantially done, with the exception of a limit- 
ed service still required in the Department of Washington. 

In the Western Department it may continue, on a very 
diminished scale, a couple of months lougcr. In Texas and 
the Department of the (xulf the supply service may possibly 
last all summer. But, by economy of our stores in hand, 
we feel authorized to say that after collecting what is al- 
ready in existence we shall be able to meet all just demands 
made upon us. We, therefore, in accordance with oui 
promise, notify our Branches that their labors in collecting 



supplies for ns may finally cease witli this date. We shall 
make no further requisitions upon them, except in regard 
to supplies already in their hands. 

'We hope our Branches will use all diligence in forward- 
ing to our Receiving Depots, through the accustomed chan- 
nels, whatever stores may reach them from their Aid Socie- 
ties, or any they have in hand. 

All balances in cash left in the Branch treasuries, after 
settling up their local affairs, will be forwarded to Geo. T. 
Strong, Esq., Treasurer of the U. S. Sanitary Commission. 

So far as any of our Branches are engaged in other por- 
tions of our work than in collecting and forwarding supplies, 
their labors will continue so long as those of the Commis- 
sion itself last. But the supply work is over, and the char- 
acteristic labors of the women of the land, in furnishing 
hospital clothing and comforts for sick and wounded soldiers, 
are completed. Henceforward, during the few months of 
existence still allotted to the Sanitary Commission to com- 
plete its work of collecting the pensions and back pay of the 
soldiers, in which it already has one hundred and twenty- 
seven ofSces established, to make up its scientific record and 
close up its widely-extended affairs, there will be no proba- 
ble necessity for addressing the women of the country, and 
this circular may be our last opportunity, until the final 
Report of the Commission is made, of expressing the grati- 
tude of the Board for their patient, humane, and laborious 
devotion to our common work. 

For more than four ^^ears the U. S. Sanitary Commission 
has depended on its Branches, mainly directed and controlled 
by women, for keeping alive the interest in its work in all 
the villages and homes of the country ; for establishing and 
banding togethor the Soldiers' Aid Societies which in thous- 
audf. have sprung up and unitod thoir strength in our service. 



By correspondence and bj^ actual visitation, as well as by a 
system of canvassing-, you, at tbe centres of influence, have 
maintained your hold upon the homes of the land, and kept 
your storehouses and ours full of their contributions. 

By what systematic and luisincss-like devotion of your time 
and talents you have been able to accomplish this we have 
been studious and admiring observers. Your volunteer work 
has had all the regularity of paid labor. In a sense of re- 
sponsibility, in system, in patient persistency, in attention to 
wearisome details, in a victory over the fickleness which 
commonly besets the work of volunteers, you have rivalled 
the discipline, the patience, and the courage, of soldiers in 
the field — soldiers enlisted for the war. l^Tot seldom, indeed, 
your labors, continued tln-ough frosts and heats, and without 
intermission, for j^ears, have broken down your health. But 
your ranks have always been kept full — and full, too, of the 
best, most capable, and noble women in the country. ISTor 
do we suppose that you, who have controlled and inspired 
our Branches, and with whom it has been our happiness to 
be brought into personal contact, are, because acting in a 
larger sphere, more worthy of our thanks and respect than 
the women who have maintained our village Soldiers' Aid 
Societies. Indeed, the ever-cheering burden of your com- 
munications to us has been the praise and love inspired in 
3' on by the devoted patriotism, the self-sacrificing zeal, of the 
Aid Societies, and of their individual contributors. Through 
you we have heard the same glowing and tear-moving tales 
of the sacrifices made by hundile homes and hands in behalf * 
of our work, which we so often hear from their comrades, of 
'privates in the field, who, throughout the war, have often won 
the laurels their ofiicers have Avorn, and have been animated 
by motives of pure patriotism, immixed with hope of pro- 



6 

motion, or desire for recognition or praise, to give their blood 
and tlicir lives for the country of their hearts. 

To you, and through you to the Soldiers' Aid Societies, 
and through them to each and every contributor to our sup- 
plies — to every woman who has sewed a seam or knitted a 
stocking in the service of the Sanitary Commission — we now 
return our most sincere and hearty thanks — thanks which 
are not ours only, but those of the Camps, the Hospitals, the 
Transports, the Prisons, the Pickets, and the Lines ; where 
your love and labor have sent comfort, protection, relief, and 
sometimes life itself. It is not too much to say, that the 
Army of women at home has fully matched in patriotism and 
in sacriiices the Army of men in the field. The mothers, sis- 
ters, wives and daughters of America have been worthy of 
the sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers who were fighting 
their battles. After having contributed their living treasures 
to the war, Avhat wonder they sent so freely after them all 
else that they had ! And this precious sympathy between 
the fire-sides and the camp-fires — between the bayonet and 
the needle, the tanned cheek and the pale fiice — has kept the 
Nation one ; has carried the Homes into the Banks, and kept 
the Ranks in the Homes, until a sentiment of oneness, of 
irresistible unanimity — in which domestic and social, civil 
and religious, political and military, elements enter(?d, quali- 
fying, strengthening, enriching, and sanctifying all — has at 
last conquered all obstacles, and given us an overwhelming, 
a profound, and a permanent victory. 

It has been our precious privilege to l^o your almoners ; to 
manage and distribute the stores you have created and given 
us for the soldiers and sailors. We have tried to do our 
duty impartially, diligently, wisely. For the means of car- 
rying on this vast work which has groMai up in our hands, 
keeping pace with the growing immensity of the war, and 



wliieli wo are now about to lay down, after giving the Ameri- 
can public an account of our stewardship, we are chiefly 
indebted to the money created by the Fairs, which the 
American women inaugurated and conducted, and to the 
supplies collected by you under our organization. To you, 
then, is finally due the largest part of whatever gratitude 
belongs to the Sanitary Commission. It is as it should be. 
The soldier will return to his home to thank his own wife, 
mother, sister, daughter, for so tenderly looking after him in 
camp and field, in hospital and prison ; and thus it will be 
seen, that it is the homes of the country which have wrought 
out this great salvation, and that the men and the women of 
America have an equal part in its glory and its joy. 

Invoking the blessing of God upon you all, we are grate- 
fully and proudly your fellow-laborers. 

H. W. BELLOWS, President 
A. D. BACHE. 
F. L. OLMSTED. 
GEORGE T. STRONG. 
ELISHA HARRIS. 
W. H. VAN BUREN. 
WOLCOTT GIBBS. 
S. G. HOWE. 
C. R. AGNEW. 
J. S. NEWBERRY. 
Et. Rev. T. M. CLARK. 
Hon. R. W. BURNETT. 
Eon. mark SKINNER. 
Eon. .JOSEPH HOLT. 
HORACE BINNEY. 
J. HUNTINGTON WOLCOTT. 
Eev. J. H. HEYWOOD. 
CHARLES J. STILLE. 
EZRA B. McCAGG. 

INC. S. BLATCHFORD, General Secretary. 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



013 744 369 7% 



